100 Geothermal Power Plants: Principles, Applications, Case Studies and Environmental Impact

page. The optimum power output is about 3.61 MW and occurs at a separator temper-
ature of 130 C and a pressure of 2.7 bar,a. Here we see that the two optima, namely,
the best specific power and the best total power do not occur at the same values of sep-
arator pressure and temperature.
Power Output vs. Separator Temperature
3.8
T-sep P-sep m-dot total W-dot (MW)
3.7
125 2.321 42.82 3.599
3.6
130 2.701 42.43 3.613

Power output, MW
3.5
135 3.120 41.96 3.600
140 3.613 41.35 3.554 3.4
145 4.154 40.59 3.478 3.3
150 4.758 39.66 3.370 3.2
155 5.431 38.50 3.227
3.1
160 6.178 37.07 3.049
3.0
120 130 140 150 160
Separator temperature,C

The utilization efficiency, eq. (5.31), can be seen to be equal to the ratio of the specific
power output to the specific exergetic power (since the total mass flow rate appears in
both the numerator and the denominator, and so cancels out). Thus the maximum utili-
zation efficiency will not be influenced by the total mass flow rate and will coincide with
the conditions for the optimum specific power. If we take the dead-state temperature to
be 25 C, then the specific exergy for the 240 C liquid-dominated reservoir fluid is
236.52 kJ/kg. Thus, for the two examples shown in this section, the optimum value of
the utilization efficiency is the same, namely, 36.3% (585.95/236.52). For the latter
case, the designer must decide on whether it is more economical to design for the high-
est utilization of the reservoir fluid or for the highest power output.

5.6 Optimum separator temperature: An approximate formulation

This derivation is based on the process diagram shown in Fig. 5.9. The goal is to find
the separator temperature, T2 (5T3 5 T4), that maximizes the specific work output, w,
from the plant. We will consider only the turbine work and neglect any pumping or
other parasitic work loads.
The specific work per unit mass of geofluid is
w 5 x2 ðh4 2 h5 Þ ð5:34Þ
To a first approximation,
h1 2 h6  cðT1 2 T6 Þ ð5:35Þ
and
h3 2 h6  cðT3 2 T6 Þ ð5:36Þ
assuming that c, the average specific heat for saturated liquid, is constant between
states 1 and 6. It is convenient for this derivation to arbitrarily set the enthalpy to
zero at state 6:
h6  0 ðreference datumÞ ð5:37Þ